Instant Replay Used In Jon Jones’ Disqualification

For the first time in MMA history, referee Steve Mazzagatti used instant replay to determine that Jon Jones’ elbows to Matt Hamill were illegal and warranted a disqualification.

I’m sure I know what you guys are thinking, can we also get re-counts for judges scorecards? The answer of course is no.

Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Keith Kizer had Mazzagatti’s back for the decision saying, “At the end of the day, they were illegal elbows; the only call he can make is a disqualification.”

At first, Mazzagatti was only going to deduct a point from Jones following a string of 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock elbows, but when Hamill was unable to continue, he went to the monitors and decided to disqualify Jones.

UFC president Dana White has been critical of Mazzagatti in the past after a couple of controversial calls.

“This [expletive] guy shouldn’t even be watching MMA on TV, let alone refereeing it. I think he’s the worst ref in the history of any fight business,” White had said previously.

“I hit him… I don’t know. I hit him so many times, and they didn’t stop it. I just kept going, and it came instinctively to come down the middle,” a calm Jones said at the post-fight press conference.

Jones was a winner in many people’s eyes, just not in the eyes of the most important person, the referee.